Dr Siva Kumar Shanmugam

Dr S Siva Kumar is head of the department, bacteriology division at ICMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, Chennai. The department is a supranational reference laboratory for TB diagnostics and closely work with National Tuberculosis Elimination Program, India and WHO in TB diagnostics for laboratory strengthening and training at international, national, and regional levels.

He is a Medical Microbiologist by training, with over 15 years of experience in the field of TB diagnostics and molecular epidemiology. His research focuses on drug-resistant TB and building next-generation sequencing capacity for improving drug-resistant TB diagnostics and drug-resistant surveillance. As part of the SNRL, he provides technical support on TB diagnostics in India and other countries like Myanmar and Timor Leste and He has been part of joint monitoring mission TB of Myanmar and Timor Leste. He is also a Member of the National Technical Expert Group: TB Diagnosis, in India and has more than 40 publications in international peer-reviewed journals.

He holds a master’s degree in medical microbiology from Christian Medical College, Vellore and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (Microbiology and Immunology) from the ICMR-National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis, Chennai (university of Madras).